


Honestly Ok

by orphan_account



Category: AFI
Genre: Angst, Decemberunderground era, Implied Self-Harm, M/M, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 07:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3167246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This afternoon I made myself get up for the first time in four days to do anything other than piss. This afternoon I tried to keep my hands clean.This afternoon I realized you weren’t coming back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honestly Ok

**Author's Note:**

> First off, the title and some of the lines in here are from a Dido song. I don't own it. She does. This story wrote itself really fast. I didn’t mean for it to be about what it became about, but sometimes that happens. It’s another one that doesn’t explicitly mention self injury but deserves a warning nonetheless. Um, I never write pre DU era so this is kinda weird. I’m proud of how short it is...also, am I the only one in the world who knows what a mailman hardhat looks like?! Seriously. Don’t own, didn’t happen.

This afternoon I made myself

( brush my teeth, so hard I gagged, with that new toothbrush. I don’t feel clean until I gag, it’s some kind of personal rule. I stood in the shower for an hour, feeling guilty for wasting water, brushing my teeth a second, third time, watching the foam I spit at the drain swirl and dissipate like clouds being scattered apart by rain. The light was off and my skin looked grey in the half-light, and I wondered for the briefest second if I really did die. 

I tried reminding myself over and over again that you’re coming back. You always do this shit, I mean it’s only been four days and when you freak out it can last longer than that. Granted this is the first time you’ve actually left, left the house, packed a suitcase. 

It’s not been that long. I’m so fucking lonely I don’t even want to be with myself anymore. 

So I just reminded myself over and over again that you’re coming back. You always do, you always will. You’re not leaving. We’d be married if we were those kind of guys and not in a band and it was legal and you weren't morally opposed to and terrified of the whole thing. 

I brushed my again and sat on the floor of the shower as the water turned lukewarm, and wished I had a mailman hat so I could know what it felt like to be a mailman in the rain. Delivering mail to each suburban house, trumping up the wet lawn, being abhored by every dog on the block. Do mailmen get to carry umbrellas? Have I ever seen a mailman with an umbrella? NO fuckin’ idea, I don’t get the mail when it’s raining, who the hell does? What an awful, overlooked job. 

I tried not to think of all the things you said to me, how when I asked you if...you said you didn’t know. I tried not to think of that because I had shit to do, emails to return calls to make friends to see, and I really couldn’t stay one more day in bed not eating and not brushing my teeth. Did I really not brush my teeth for that long? I thought I was obsessed oral hygiene...one more time. I squeezed another bit toothpaste onto that new toothbrush, brushed them one more time until my gums stung and I spit blood. 

You’re coming back, you always do. 

I wondered how I’ll answer if people ask, how I know I’ll pretend like everything’s fine. How I’d smile, role my eyes, dismiss it with a wave of my hand.   
“He’s being just being Jade. You know he pulls this shit sometimes.”

 

I still wasn’t hungry, which was fairly alarming since I haven’t eaten in awhile. I wish he hadn’t scared me like this, because the grief got so big my stomach fed off of it, and deluded itself into thinking it didn’t have to consume real food. Lots of applesauce lately, a box full of strawberry poptarts without icing. The stuff real men are made of, right. 

My head was swimming. I made myself choke, gag into the drain of the shower and try to puke but there was no food, only that lonely sinking feeling. I thought of the empty bed, the covers rumpled at the foot and how there was only one dent, the dent where I’d been sleeping, living. I saw static and spat thick hunger-saliva, and thought of how fuckin’ horrible it was to have a king sized bed when there was no one to share it with and someone had...

When I asked you...you said you didn’t know. 

That was a first. 

I wished I could fucking throw this feeling up, spit it down the drain, dry myself off now that the water’s freezing and my hair is full of it, weighing a goddamn ton. I brushed my teeth. Made myself gag. Dragged my aching body to shaking knees and floated to the granite kitchen counted, rubbing my eyes with regret because they stung from all the salt, from how much I’d cried. 

I’ll feel stupid for crying so much when you come back, like you always fuckin’ do. 

Applesauce. Strawberry poptarts without icing. I hummed to myself, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything and thought about how I got up, ate Jelly. Knees buckled, brushed my teeth once again with that new toothbrush. Made myself gag on the grief. Rubbed sore eyes. 

Those emails could wait until tomorrow.)

get up for the first time in four days to do anything other than piss.   
~*~

This afternoon I tried to 

(keep myself from calling you, you needed time to think. That’s what you said, but I couldn’t help it. I was making myself insane again, hyperventilating on the bed, feeling like my hair could strangle me in my sleep and how could I- I can’t stop without- I need you to- you’re not-where ARE YOU so I found my phone, dialed your cell with shaking sweaty digits and you didn’t answer. Your voicemail did and I balked on what to say, so you’re going to have this missed call from me and a few seconds of terrified silence, my breathing, something. I thought about that for a long time, what it might look like, sound like. I called back again with the intention of leaving a message, but realized I still didn’t have anything to say. 

 

Then I spent a few hours in the bathroom rocking back and forth like some kid in a padded room. This followed slamming my right forearm in the shower door three times, wincing each impact, then biting each shoulder as hard as I could once. Somehow I didn’t feel like that was cheating but I know you would have, so I went through the usual motions of aftermath panic, swirling around my room looking for cover up, tearing our drawers apart looking for that zippered bag of old, shitty stage makeup from when painted my face white for our shows. It worked blended on top of my tattoos to take the shine of bruise away. I slathered it on the newly forming bumps, the kind that would be a boring, unsatisfying brown the next morning because door-slamming bruises were always that color, were always too deep to bruise purple. I was halfway up to the rings of teethmarks still wet with spit when I stopped, heart pounding like I thought you were coming home or something.

Then I realized how ridiculous this whole mess was because I had nothing to hide from you because you were gone. 

So then I sat on the tile floor in the bathroom, swaying back and forth, trying to keep my mind blank so I wouldn’t panic. Rationalizing things to myself over and over again in worse and worse ways, making it all fall apart in a thousand different patterns so it was impossible to not think I deserved to do it, that you didn’t care, after all you’d left. It would still hurt him, my mind screamed, the rational part of my mind you developed in me so I wouldn’t kill you every time I--

But then I remembered that I asked you...and you said you didn’t know. 

So I should be able to. 

Then knuckles against tile, screaming wordlessly and that’s my voice, I didn’t remember it being that low. I haven’t talked in what, five days, seven days, ten days a year. My throat had been used solely for crying and I still hated admitting that, because when you come back I’ll feel so fuckin’ stupid. 

The phone rang and I sprang from the bathroom floor, tearing into the bedroom and catching my hip on the edge of the door, tripping as I grabbed it, flinging the flip cover open and answering you with far too much enthusiasm. The first thing you asked was if I was okay, you were sorry you missed the calls, your phone was on silent. You sounded so nervous.   
I didn’t know how to answer your question. I’m fine, I’ve been shaking on the bathroom floor sitting on my hands with half blended foundation all over my arms like spots of snow on ink. Throbbing, gagging, making myself. Do. Anything. Stop myself from. Doing. Anything. 

I didn’t know how to answer your question so I asked, voice foreign and raspy with salt and sleep or lack therof, “where are you?” 

You told me you were out of state. Not what state, just not this one. You told me when you left that you were going to stay with your brother, maybe get a hotel. Turns out you’re on Warped Tour doing merch with Smith for some band we know I’ve already forgotten the name of. The mention of Warped makes me remember it’s summer time. I want to tell you it’s been overcast here, raining even, and the mailmen have to go out in it in their hardhats and maybe-umbrellas, but I know that it’s actually not raining and is probably as fuckin’ sunny and miserably hot as ever but who can tell when all I do is lie in bed crying with the blinds drawn and the music on. 

So instead I cough and cough, sputtering and start drowning maybe and you’re apologizing over and over again and I’m ready to freak out and run back to my teeth and the shower door and my other arm this time because you haven’t realized the horrible mistake you made and hopped on the next train home yet. 

I’m so fucking lonely I don’t even want to be with myself anymore. 

The lights are humming somewhere and it sounds like synthesizers through headphones. This shit doesn’t make any sense because why the hell would I ever choose to turn on a light? You said somewhere in the middle of all that buzzing and rain clattering on my mailman helmet that you really had to go. I let you. I laid in bed for a long time after that too exhausted to move, swelling in unsatisfying brown bumps and thinking of all the skin I had on my body.) 

keep my hands clean. 

~*~

This afternoon I realized

(that I needed to clip my nails. They were getting alarming and once I’d labored away for what seemed like forever, my fingers were sore and my eyes hurt and I collapsed on the bed again, imagining how far away the applesauce in the kitchen was. I was running out, and managed to text my neighbor that I was sick, and I’d pay her if she picked me up some Motts original in a jar. I preferred the way it tasted in the individual serving cups, but there was so much more packaging and I really didn’t need anymore guilt in my life. 

There were mirrors in our house I was deliberately avoiding. I would have rather not seen everything that was worth leaving shining back at me on that pane of glass, meaningless and silver and the same color as the overcast, the grey skin, the mailman hat. I accidentally caught sight of myself in the bathroom when I finally got up to take a shit, and someone laughed, startling me. Or, I laughed and startled myself with the eerie echo of the bathroom. I had a beard, which was bad enough. I examined my roots for a half hour or whatever. They were growing in a few inches, light tawny brown, a color I hated, and I ended up texting my neighbor again, telling her than in addition to applesauce, if she could pick up some quick blue and developer for bleach, that would be dandy, too. 

Funny, the things that matter or don’t matter in times of crisis. 

When she rang the doorbell an hour or so later I’d managed to do a half assed job of shaving. I spent the rest of the afternoon mixing bleach in a plastic bowl and eating an entire jar of applesauce, washing the bleach out only to realize that I’d forgotten black hair dye. Whatever, this was the first time in years I’d done my own hair, so I gave myself a break. After all my arms were sore and I felt like I’d cheated. Plus, I’d finally checked my email only to find three, still unopened forwards from different people all entitled “Jade told me to check on you.” I threw my phone somewhere after than, still haven’t been able to find it. 

After that, back to the bathroom, teeth brushed four or five times, bloody gums and blood speckled in foam in the sink, sore fingers, sore arms, tight jaw. Bottle blonde roots the color of straw, the color of half of your hair. Hell, I meant to do that. 

Too exhausted, crumpled back on the bathroom floor, the stereo not loud enough, the hunger so loud and red the color of blood and I screamed again, yanked at my new hair and reminded myself that I’d meant to do that, I’d meant to do that, I’d meant to

and...that was a first.  
Tried not to remember.   
To remember what you said.

When I asked you, “Do you still love me?” You said, “I don’t know.” 

Gagging in the shower, water swirling whatever grief I feed on into the drain. Rain pounding down on the hardhat. The mailman dropping soggy letters off at the door because he wasn’t allowed to bring an umbrella. All the dogs on the block growling as he passed, hungry for all the skin on his body. 

I climbed back into bed. )

that you weren’t coming back.


End file.
